Apple has a new (old) iPhone to help win over Asia
When Apple launched the iPhone 7, it began to officially phase out the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but now a new variant of the three-year-old iPhone is landing in a few places. Who is it for?
A lot of people, apparently.
Apple is launching a new 32GB model of the iPhone 6, its flagship smartphone that first introduced in 2014. Although it's being widely reported as for sale in India, a person familiar with Apple's plans told Mashable that the 32GB iPhone 6 will be for sale in several Asian markets, including China.
The 32GB variant of the iPhone 6 will be sold exclusively through online retailers, the person said.
The 32GB iPhone 6 will be for sale in several Asian markets, including China.
Apple selling huge quantities of older iPhones in Asian markets isn't anything new — the four-year-old iPhone 5S is still available in the country, for instance — but the revival of the old phone in this fashion could help boost overall iPhone sales, analysts say.
When Apple introduced the iPhone 7 last year, it quietly discontinued the 16GB and 64GB variants of its immediate predecessor, the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. The company’s website was updated worldwide to introduce a new base model of the phone with 32GB of internal storage, and to remove the iPhone 6.
The new iPhone 6 32GB variant is available in Space Gray from Amazon India at a discounted price of Rs 28,990 ($435). Furthermore, the third-party seller, who has been running an ad campaign on the Amazon India homepage throughout this week, is offering an additional discount of up to $150 to customers who are willing to trade in their old smartphone.
That's an interesting price point, says Tarun Pathak, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, who added that the 32GB iPhone 6 could be Apple's best bet now to supersede the ever-popular iPhone 5S in the Indian market. The four-year-old iPhone model is currently the best selling iPhone in India, counting for more than half of all the iPhones sold in in the country in the last year, Counterpoint statistics say.
"It's a good strategy by Apple. At the time of the launch, iPhone's memory configurations are positioned in a way to maximize profits," Pathak said. "But as soon as the model becomes older, the company leans towards the popular memory configuration. We anticipate that iPhone 6 will be the new iPhone 5S for Apple [in India], leveraging the aspirational value of the brand."
In comparison, the 16GB iPhone 6, which is still available at several retailers is selling at Rs 30,000 ($450).
Many were expecting the iPhone SE, the 4-inch iPhone model that Apple introduced last year, would be the true successor to the iPhone 5S in the Indian market. However, the iPhone SE hasn't lived up to expectations, and Apple has only sold about 60,000 iPhone SE models in India as of earlier this year, according to the same firm.
Price is probably to blame for that -- the iPhone SE starts at Rs 39,000 ($585), and it so far hasn't receive any kind of price cut in the country. It now looks like Apple is pinning its hopes on the new 32GB iPhone 6 to drive more people to its elite ecosystem.
